STRIKES

There is no doubt, that what the early miners suffered in order to feed their families had led them to a state of sheer despair. Seeing how their so-called masters (super-rich) were living in splendour, while at the same time having to watch their own families living in squalor and near to starvation. One man alone, fighting for things to get better against such odds was hopeless and therefore the miners had to unite and strike. This unity was obvious and was a natural happening that had to come. Miners formed themselves into unions to combat injustice even though the fight was to be hard-fought for many years to come.

As the years passed, the colliers and miners became more organised, and a milestone was reached in 1889 with the formation of the Miners Federation of Great Britain. Strikes occurred at regular intervals, and by the 1890s had virtually become a way of life. One of them – the coal strike of 1893- brought the Eastern Valley Iron and Tinplate works to a standstill, and some establishments were still closed in January 1895. Following the 1893 strike, depression in trade meant that by late 1894 many colliers were underground without food for their rest breaks, and the men at Tirpentwys, Llanerch and a number of other collieries were working just two, or occasionally three, days a week.

Sufferers from the strike in search of relief

During the 1898 coal strike, terrible distress was again felt throughout the whole of the Eastern Valley, with bread being distributed every day at Blaenavon and soup kitchens being opened in most towns and villages. Owing to a shortage of funds the soup kitchens at Garndiffaith and Abersychan were forced to stop relief for adults, and concentrated their efforts on local children, while at Pontypool bread and cheese were given three times a week to the neediest cases. People at Pontnewynydd were marginally more fortunate, receiving not only bread and cheese but also cocoa, which was donated by Messrs Cadbury Brothers. Some Pontnewynydd families were also given evaporated milk, although the Pontypool Free Press emphasised that in all relief centres! Only the most deserving cases need to apply;

Even during strikes the need for coal occasionally resulted in tragedy, and in August 1893, a boy named Ernest Thomas, the son of a collier from Cwmyniscoy was digging “crop” coal in a hole on the mountain near Penrheol-either to take home or to sell to earn a little money- when the sides fell in and killed him. Likewise in May 1898, ten-year-old George Holden was digging for coal in some disused patches about a mile from Blaenavon, when he was buried by a fall of rubbish. It took two men twenty minutes to dig him out, sadly he was dead when found.